Burzynski: Fighting the Big Pharma Cartel to Cure Cancer

[Note: the opinions expressed below are those of the contributor alone and publication does not indicate that The Disinformation Company endorses those opinions.]

My friend Talitha Thayla organized a screening of Burzynski: The Movie at Traditions Cafe in downtown Olympia, WA. It’s a movie about the legal struggles of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, a physician whose antineoplaston cancer treatments has earned the ire of the United States Food and Drug Administration. The movie depicts patients being cured of aggressive brain cancers when the only alternative was crippling doses of radiation and chemo. You can watch the video in this post.

As I watched the movie a familiar pattern unfolded: A monopolistic big business cartel uses the legal system to conduct a witch hunt against an individual who threatens their hegemony in keeping themselves rich and the public powerless. Only this time there is a refreshing twist: Burzynski is making headway in the fight. He’s beaten the Texas Medical Board’s and the FDA’s malicious prosecutions Five times.

One thing the FDA in its witch hunt against Dr. Burzynski never denied: His natural, non-invasive non-toxic therapy cures cancer.

Burzynski has never tested his assertions. Science Based Medicine, a group of patient advocates across the medical disciplines, has reviewed this “documentary” (made by an ad man, it should be noted), and they were horrified that these 3 anecdotes out of the untold thousands of patients he’s had were the best ones. Really. I do hope you reconsider this, because you are shooing the desperate into the clutches of one cold bastard.

bobbiethejean

Very well said.

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

You didn’t watch it did you? How can you say “well said”? if you didn’t watch it? He’s had many many clinical trials and the drugs are FDA approved.

Artor

He has not actually completed any of those clinical trials, and he charges his patients thousands of dollars for the drugs through his own pharmacy, which is an egregious violation of medical ethics. The drugs he uses are FDA approved for other applications, not the cancer treatments he’s applying them to.

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

“The drugs he uses are FDA approved for other applications, not the cancer treatments he’s applying them to.” where did you get that little tidbit of info? Do you have any evidence that these chemicals cause harm?

I’m assuming you watched the video. It would be interesting to have a discussion based on counter claims of things actually in the video. Hopefully you aren’t simply picking a team here. Like “Oooh a debate between “science” and “alternative medicine” Let me put my $.02 in” because that is not the issue.

* Antineoplastons are drugs composed of chemical compounds that are naturally present in theurine and blood. They are an experimental cancer therapy that is purported to provide a natural biochemical substance that is excreted and therefore lacking in people with cancer.

* Antineoplastons were first proposed as a possible cancer treatment in 1976.

* Antineoplastons were originally isolated from human urine but are now synthesized from readily available chemicals in the developer’s laboratory.

* Antineoplastons are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the prevention or treatment of any disease.

* No randomized controlled trials showing the effectiveness of antineoplastons have been published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

* Antineoplaston side effects can include serious neurologic toxicity.

* Nonrandomized clinical trials investigating the anticancer efficacy of antineoplastons are underway at the developer’s institute.

So, those are the inconvenient facts for you. And of course the “movie” does not point this out because the movie is crude propaganda made by an ad man, not a documentary by any meaningful definition of the term.

bobbiethejean

Actually I did watch it and I know kookery when I see it. Or at least I’d like to think I do. I absolutely believe there is a great deal of corruption going on in the pharmaceutical industry (actually I know it for a fact). There’s a good reason it has such a terrible rep. However, I do not see any merit in running to the opposite extreme. A quack is a quack regardless of any possible truths spoken against corrupt big-pharma.

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

I have a hard time believing you. Its like 2 hours long. You never mention anything in the video in your comments. Sorry but i don’t believe you. I think you saw a bunch of fellow “skeptics” arguing on here and decided to join in and say “amen” basically. The video documents how these drugs have been tested. Had you watched the video you would know that.

http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

i think you’re reaching a little here Ted. Careful where you tread lest you become a Camron Wiltshire 😛

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

Most of the people that came to the screening didn’t watch the whole thing. Its really long. I guess you are right though. I shouldn’t care so much. But to say “he never tested his assertions” and then to have some one jump on and say “well said” is pretty bogus. Because all the clinical testing that’s been done is covered in the video.

http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

yeah. I get that, i myself probably won’t watch any//all of it. I pretty much make the (baseless?) assumption that cancer curing will never be done with a magic chemical, and assume general lifestyle/health changes are much more important. That, or Laser Surgury… cus that.. thats just fun.

Besides, its always fun to watch strict empirical reductionists get their panties in a wad…

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

OK whatever. Thanks for commenting about not watching. Its not a “magical chemical” its a peptide in the blood and urine that healthy people produce and people with cancer stop producing.

I guess its fun to just riff off the other commenters and show support to people you usually agree with on other topics. But its really not the same as having a discussion and being open minded about something.

Its interesting though how quick people mobilize and how motivated they are to debate stuff and all they have to go on is what other people have said. Its like they pick people they agree with and then simply imbibe whatever they say about every other topic. Like “Hmm what does Rush Limbaugh have to say about this? Oh, that’s what he says! Well, then there is my opinion, then!”

http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

Hehe sorry, I get my jollies discussing argumentative style more than content. I don’t have enough time anymore to get so invested in long videos like this anymore. To me though, the entire issue of cancer is severely lacking in understanding of causes to really even posit any treatments that can be acceptable to your opponents here. But of course, allopathic destruction methodologies(poison, cut, burn) are always acceptable for some reason.

The presence/non presence issue of antineoplastons is an interesting one though. Even more interesting is your opponents complete lack of acceptance of this being the slightest bit compelling. Quack is just one of those words that permanently curse people’s public image and skeptics eat it up.

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

exactly. I am not “completely credulous” either. Black and white thinking there. You know, if you don’t self identify as a “skeptic” the only other choice is to be “completely credulous” right? Can’t have more that two choices, now, that’s too confusing!

This guy could be a con artist for all I know. I think its a gutsy move though that for a while he specialized in treating children with aggressive brain tumors, that had been completely written off by the medical establishment. And some of them were cured!

The compelling thing to me is the the theme of the innovative individual fighting the collective(uncreative) cartel and winning. So yeah its kind of a mythic way I have of framing it. I may be wrong.

But I mean these fucking skeptics are like “Oh that’s “woo woo” stuff. I prefer hard science.” Its not woo. Its fucking pharmaceuticals! But they have to carve everything in the World into two broad categories. They are fundamentalists to the core.

bobbiethejean

Ted, it’s woo-woo. If you put a woo-woo peddler in a lab coat, he’s still a woo-woo peddler.

You’re reacting badly to being told you’re wrong about something. No one likes being told they’re wrong. I get that. I hate it! But you know what I do when I find out I’m wrong about something? I spin on a fucking dime. I say “whoops! I was wrong. Time to rethink mah shit.”

Stop acting like I and anyone who disagrees with you are close-minded fundamentalists just because we don’t unhesitantly accept everything we hear. You accuse us of being close-minded fundamentalists who did not watch the video. It appears to me that all you did was watch the propaganda and not do your research.

They don’t use words like “quack” and “woo woo” They discuss it objectively and point out its merits even if its not a “miracle cure” You are clearly biased. The impression I am getting is that it may not be a miracle cure but that there is definitely something to it.

Calypso_1

The NCI site does indeed have a very balanced tone. They are going to sound even keeled no matter what they say.

“The evidence for use of antineoplaston therapy as a treatment for cancer is inconclusive. Controlled clinical trials are necessary to assess the value of this therapy.”

(highlight mine: this is really all you need. No proof and no controlled trials.)

Also to note, they do not provide a “level of evidence” for this therapy because:

“>To qualify for a level of evidence analysis, a study must:

>Be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

>Report on a therapeutic outcome or outcomes, such as tumor response,
improvement in survival, or measured improvement in quality of life.

>Describe clinical findings in sufficient detail that a meaningful evaluation can be made. “

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

“Report on a therapeutic outcome or outcomes, such as tumor response,
improvement in survival, or measured improvement in quality of life.”

They have that in there.

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

Seriously, are you trying to be cute? There have been clinical trials. Just not phase three yet. That’s *not* all you need and saying things like “there have never been any controlled clinical trials” is misleading. Its more like “more controlled clinical trials are needed” But who cares, no one will probably click these links I post and few probably watched the video. Having a developmental drug that hasn’t made it to phase III is not being a “woo woo quack” but sure, whatever you say.

Calypso_1

They are included but not at a level to satisfy the criterion for inclusion in the NCI’s metric. I am in no way trying to be “cute”. “Controlled” is a standard technical term in the sciences. It is taught in secondary education. None of his trials have used a control. That is what they mean.

All he has done is shown that the drug is safe to give to humans and at what dosage range.

There are no controlled double-blind studies, to show the isolated effects of this additive agent.

The patients are receiving (as far as I have been able to discern) standard chemo & radiation in addition to the novel factor. Without proper studies there is NO way to distinguish the effects of one from the other.

Hence the NCI’s use of the word INCONCLUSIVE.

No matter what results he achieves and reports, if he does not use the correct methodologies the results will be inconclusive.

This is not what I am saying it is what the source you provided says.

Why any researcher over a 25 year period would be afraid to use standard well-defined study protocols to determine efficacy is beyond me. It raises huge red flags to me when the person is using the same treatment clinically at high cost and using such dubious (and outright misleading marketing such as “personalized gene-targeted therapy”.

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t have the right to pursue non-standard, alternative treatments etc. Could there be something to his line of inquiry? I don’t know. People spend whole careers studying this stuff at levels far beyond my own and they run into dead ends all the time…especially in cancer treatments. Are things
slipping through the cracks? – Undoubtedly. Are there whole paradigms that need shifting in the sciences? – Sure.

I don’t think those are the operative factors in this case.

http://twitter.com/spookiewon Pjay (Patti) Pender

Except that they don’t point out any “merits.” The article doesn’t use the words “woo” or “quack” but it is simply a description of what Burzynski believes and does. It doesn’t point out any “merits,” nor did it imply “there is definitely something to it.”

Oh. so you’re a skeptic now suddenly, eh? Well as it just so happens, Mr. Skeptic, I listen to videos in the background as I work…. all…. day….. long. Pretty much everyday. Yeah, that’s right. I have two monitors. I’m doing art on one, I’m listening to music or youtube videos on the other. OOPSIES. 2 hours? Pft. I’ve listened to 12 hours of lectures straight and that’s not uncommon for me at all.

Furthermore, the “testing” he did on those drugs was NOT scientific nor did it pass peer review. If you knew anything about the scientific method and peer review, you’d know that.

I kinda like you and I’m sorry to say this because you seem like such a nice guy but you’re an utterly credulous, gullible wanna-believer who unhesitantly accepts whatever happens to fit inline with your predetermined concept of how life works. That is not how a logical, critical thinking person behaves.

A friend of mine organized the screening of this film so maybe I was a bit biased. The possibility of my own bias is not invisible to me, like it appears to be with you skeptics. I self correct all the time in my views.

So the jury is out for results from a peer reviewed phase III clinical trial. There is apparently one going on in Japan. So maybe I am not as informed about how peer review works as I should be but I still think an important distinction should be made between “never been tested” and “never been peer reviewed in an independent Phase III clinical trial.

ZM

Double-blind study and peer-review are different things. My understanding is that no one can do peer-review on antineoplastons simply because there are no experts in the field. However, there are lots of activities in labs across the globe. Occasional successful outcomes in patient treatments at the Bruzynski clinic suggest that those guys haven’t mastered the method yet, if they actually understand any of it at all. My guess is that they have been getting different results from similar cases, and they have no clue why is that so. Also they don’t want to share what they achieved so far because they would lose advantage and massive potential for profit. I think no one in this story is genuinely concerned for patients.

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

You seem like a voice of reason.

Calypso_1

Most of those listings are simple reviews he himself has submitted from his own clinic. That in no way implies they are truly ‘published’. No peer reviewed journal has run them. The FDA has thoroughly investigated his methods of research trials and found them lacking. This sort of thing happens to non-controversial research studies as well. It has nothing to do with persecution, just bad study design. Even BigPharma (gasp) gets popped for Billions on this very thing (as well they should be (and please don’t think this is an endorsement for their business practices)).

At best his reports can be viewed as case studies (which are
the weakest form of research) and not clinical trials.

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

Actually that’s partly true, but its also true that the drugs have been approved by the FDA for a PHASE III clinical trial, so they obviously aren’t altogether lacking or they wouldn’t be approved for a Phase III clinical trial.

bobbiethejean

Ted, darling, I researched it, thoroughly. His assertions have utterly FAILED peer review and have not been replicable despite MANY attempts by MANY other scientists. His methods are sloppy, his communications are dishonest and disorganized, his research does not follow the scientific method, and that is being VERY generous in terms of what I have found. If you want my full opinion, he is a rotten, loathsome scam-artist who profiteers on the suffering of desperate cancer patients.

If antineoplastons were found to be effective, there is NO WAY it could remain suppressed. Someone, somewhere WOULD make a cure out of it. The fact is, independent scientists have tried and have not been able to replicate the results.

You go ahead and believe whatever makes you happy. I will believe what I find to be true.

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

Its hard to argue with you when you sweet talk me like that. I get all discombobulated!

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

Somebody besides Burzynski saw fit to patent them. Why do you think that is? Did you get that far in ? The patent stuff was at the end, you may have been drawing a cool elongated wolf woman or something during that part…

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

British Railways have a patent on a nuclear fusion powered flying saucer. Where can I buy one?

Having a patent means nothing other than that someone wanted to patent it. There are patents for perpetual motion machines, abandoned drugs, all sorts of things.

Focusing on patents is simply a smokescreen to obscure the provable fact that there is no good scientific evidence that ANPs work, still less work as advertised. Which is why the FDA have just issued an enforcement letter telling Burzynski to stop the adverts.

ZM

Antineoplastons were found to be effective against cancers and it was not suppressed. It was also found that they can be used as reliable markers.

Some of the drugs are standard chemo that the rest of the establishment uses/misuses. Burzynski diagnoses a patient with a “finger print” specific combination tailored according to their DNA. Another practice rarely used in mainstream medical practice. Instead of playing the guessing game and getting rich for “trying” a variety of drugs on a patient before “finding” the one that works.

OK, so what you said “Burzynski has never tested his assertions” is patently false. according the National Cancer Institute. The above article discusses how antineoplastins have been tested.

If you said “antineoplastins have yet to be tested in an independent, per reviewed phase III clinical trial” you would have point, but I guess that wouldn’t sound as dramatic and quackish, as saying “never been tested” so basically you are lying through omission.

Haystack

Burzynski is anything but a bold crusader, being unfairly persecuted by the establishment. In fact, he’s notorious for threatening science bloggers with frivolous libel suits who dare to question *his* methods.

He charges tens of thousands of dollars to cancer suffers to participate in his clinical trials, and yet hasn’t managed to publish anything in a reputable journal since 2006. Nobody has been able to replicate his results (the National Cancer Institutes in America and Japan, as well as Sigma-Tau Pharmaceuticals have all tried, with no success). Several of the patients who he has held up as success stories in the media have since died of their cancers.

People forgo real medical treatment to go to his clinic, drain their life savings, and die. He’s nothing more than con man, preying upon the terminally ill, and frankly he should be in prison.

Oh and yes, of course. Big pharma is paying me buckets of money to write this.

Ahem

National Cancer Institutes in America are inept at backing up his find or finding a cure of any kind…that is some shocking information there Haystack, as it’s all funded by big pharma charging also thousands of dollars for chemo and radiation (carsenegic treatments btw) that also fail and kill people, not so? Look through the hypocrisy of your statement and what you’re defending. Whether this guy is for real or not, standard cancer treatments have done worse.

http://twitter.com/rjblaskiewicz Bob Blaskiewicz

The have shown incremental advances, Ahem. We’ve been able to stop most cervical cancers cold w/ vaccines. We’ve made advances. But just because they are not perfect cures (nobody says they are), unpleasant, and costly doesn’t mean we have to reject them out of hand. That’s the Nirvana fallacy. Cancer is dozens and dozens of different diseases, and when it takes hold, it’s a moving target (obeying laws of selection). That’s why it’s so hard to treat effectively.

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

Welcome to Disinfo Bob, looks like you are a first time commenter. hmmm…

ZM

Can you see a fallacy of relevance in the title of your post on Burzynski @ SH?

Matt Staggs

Hey Bob – thanks for dropping in. You’re always welcome.

Ahem

You’re very sure of yourself Bob, do you work in pharmaceutical industry? Wouldn’t shock me. To say we stopped cervical cancer with hpv shots that just surfaced is a pretty bold statement and very fictional. Here’s a link on side effects of this very new vaccine: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/HPV-vaccination/Pages/Side-effects.aspx Talk to me in at least few years, since you like evidence so much, you should wait for it first.

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

Hurrah! The Pharma Shill Gambit! That’s the medical equivalent of a Godwin post there. You lose.

Haystack

Standard cancer treatments are far from perfect, but they are demonstrated to lower the mortality rates of cancer sufferers. Burzynski just takes people’s money, and hasn’t been able to demonstrate that anything he is doing actually works; no amount of slick, exploitative advertising changes that.

He’s making hundreds of thousands of dollars off of a dubious and unproven treatment that no-one else can replicate, and you suppose that he’s the reliable, unbiased source here?

I don’t understand why people who are critical of the way big pharma exploits human suffering are so gullible when any “alternative medicine” practitioner engages in the same misbehavior.

Ahem

If you look into it, there are tons of options for cancer, natural treatments from different sources, all of them are labeled as quackery. Here’s one found in a Canadian University by accident! :http://dcawatch.com/home/ I’m not saying that people don’t exploit the system on all levels, but when it comes cancer Inc, it’s a less fair game. I’m pretty sure you’ll find any backing to an argument on the web, you’ll be right at the click of a mouse. But sometimes it’s good to use just common sense.

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

The majority of purported “natural” cancer treatments are either scams or well-meaning delusions. The fact is that people who use “alternative” cancer cures have worse outcomes and die sooner. Harsh reality. Science has made progress but not yet, by a long way, beaten cancer, but pseudoscience has contributed the square root of nothing at all. There is no “cancer inc.”, that is a bullshit conspiracy theory of no merit whatsoever – there are more actors with more different motivations in cancer research than in pretty much any other field of medicine.

Ahem

Yeah, you just blew my mind with your ignorance, go back to sleep.

Susanne_Ireland

I spoke with a neighbour who is the head of pharmacology in Ireland, where I live, and he tells me that the costs for Burzynski’s treatment is LESS than for chemo offered here. His remark was that in terms of cost, the HSE would be far better off using anti-neoplastons.

http://www.facebook.com/VinFiend Vincent Najger

except…of the 60+…yes ….SIXTY PLUS Phase II clinical Trials that that scam artist has initiated over a 35 year period (he doesn’t mention THAT much DOES he)….not 1…NOT ONE has gone onto Phase III……yeah…I’m sure the Irish would LOVE to use his scheme….it’s REALLY cheap…..except it DOESN’T WORK!!!!!! (he ticks ALL the criteria for ‘Crank’….uno….sole Crusader for Justice blahblahblah…If it DID work…why isn’t the wider community using it? You’d imagine he could get FAR Wealthier than he is if he had anything to Patent)….I think we all, whether we use our Heads or our Hearts, know the answer to this one…….It’d be nice IF it worked, but it doesn’t (personal Testimony is NOTORIOUSLY fallible, which is why we use Scientific Study instead….he’s had PLENTY of Opportunity, 65+ studies to demonstrate that it DOES actually work, yet STILL isn’t forthcoming….with anything but corpses and broken families)

David Howe

I know many people whose cancer was abated by chemo, radiation and other treatments. thousands of dollars is what these treatments cost. they sometimes fail, yes. not treating is an option that almost certainly results in death.

http://twitter.com/spookiewon Pjay (Patti) Pender

I do too. Me, for one.

Ahem

I also know someone who refused chemo cured their cancer with a natural treatment. Most of these people you speak of go into remission in 5 years time. It’s even expected when chemo ‘works’, the doctor never says you’re cured, the cancer is in remission. Get it? I don’t say don’t treat it, but a person with cancer should make the decision for themselves rather than be cornered into the only and very toxic treatments approved by the state. You’d think by now, at least couple other options would be available. It’s not a lack of them, it’s politics. Sheesh people.

David Howe

nobody is ever corned into any treatments. I think you know that.

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

I do not know any oncologist who says patients are “cured” – remission is the normal terminology. But you are missing an important point.

If something can be proven to work, it is called “medicine”. There is no realistic chance that a provable effective treatment for cancer would not be adopted. None.

Paul

Not some times fail, almoust always fail!!!!

David Howe

not even close to correct

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

That is, quite simply, nonsense. Burzynski has been “researching” antineoplastons for over thirty years, NCI investigated them over two decades ago but the results were poor and other researchers were given incomplete, inaccurate or downright dishonest data by Burzynski. He has over 60 clinical trials registered since trial registration was made compulsory, and he has not published a single one of them. If he is not a quack and a charlatan then he is going to considerable lengths to look like one.

Ahem

Reading anything from you is nonsense at this point, corporate puppet.

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

Ah, the “pharma shill gambit”. You lose.

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

Which patients in the movie are dead? Name names. Back your claims.

Haystack

I’m not talking about the ones in the movie; though if you care to read a skeptical physician’s perspective on each of those patients:

I was referring principally to the success stories that were presented on Sally Jesse Raphael in 1988.

“In 1992, ‘Inside Edition’ reported that two of the four patients had died and a third was having a recurrence of her cancer. (The fourth patient had bladder cancer, which has a good prognosis.) The widow of one of Raphael’s guests stated that her husband and five others from the same city had sought treatment after learning about Burzynski from a television broadcast — and that all had died of their disease. ”

The problem with testimonials as evidence is that it’s not hard to convince a desperate, terminally-ill that they’re being helped. Cancers go into remission; patients who are receiving an alt med modality are often receiving conventional treatment at the same time. You be credible, you need a study, and thus far nobody has been able to replicate his results.

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

Ok. So lots of people die of cancer after taking more mainstream treatments. What is your point? Do you have proof that antineoplastins cause harm?

You make it sound like standard of care cancer treatments are like anti-venom for a snake bite or something. Its not that cut and dried.

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

Yes, the side effects include serious neurological toxicity and they may also delay the use of effective treatments. That’s one reason why Burzynski has been told he must not advertise ANPs as safe and effective, because there is no good evidence they are either.

http://twitter.com/MissNissKat NissKat

The side effects of conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy include organ damage and secondary cancers! 30+ years of ANPs with a long list of word of mouth referrals from treated patients speaks volumes against our current death dealing cancer industry. Millions of people die each year from cancer and MOST will have had chemo. That also speaks volumes about how these current “safe” FDA approved treatments are failures and death traps. Let’s not forget that in court under oath, FDA already confirmed the safety and efficacy of Dr. Burzynski’s antineoplaston therapy.

I know that Burzynski shills insist that the mere existence of a phase 3 trial proves that the phase 2 trials, not one of which has been published, show safety and efficacy, but that is simply not true. A trial cannot show safety and efficacy without being published, and in any case the existence of trials absolutely does not prove that the trial’s intended outcome is valid, otherwise we would not need trials.

Every single reliable independent source is unanimous on this: Burzynski has not demonstrated the safety and efficacy of ANPs. It really does not matter how many times he and you insist otherwise, it is not even slightly ambiguous.

The state of play, as of today, is that the FDA do not confirm the safety or efficacy of ANPs and all reliable independent authorities describe ANPs as unproven, while Burzynski portrays them as proven and effective, something he has been told by the FDA to stop doing. Burzynski shills relentlessly cherry-pick individual statements from individual points in time, in order to obscure this obvious and well documented fact.

Paul

The clinical trials conducted by FDA, did not fallow Burzinski protocols and intented do fail on purpouse because they wanted to suport ” cut poison and burn” therapy”.Do your reading before talking!!!

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

False. The 60 unpublished clinical trials registered with clinicaltrials.gov are all being run by Burzynski, and the trials run by others were not run by FDA (which does not run trials) but by independent researchers in various groups. The best known it the NCI trial which was terminated after five years due to two things: the fact that most of the patients forwarded by Burzynski for inclusion did not meet the criteria, and the lack of any credible evidence it was working (the patients mainly died with no significant change in outcome).

Others who tried to follow up on the Burzynski research found a mish-mash of problems including people who did not appear to have active cancer when treatment started, lack of comparable results because measures had not been taken to ensure that pre and post radiology results would be comparable, and in some cases claimed cures which turned out still to have disease or metastasis.

Science has no vested interest in whether Burzynski is right or wrong, thoguh obviously some companies who are peripherally engaged with the world of science, will. There are many actors in cancer research in many countries, some of which have a vested interest in patentable cures, and some which don’t. It is grssly insulting to say that oncologists pursue radio and chemotherapy because they love it, or for profit, when they “know” there is a better alternative: I know of no oncologist who would not leap at the chance of a provable cure, even if it meant the drug companies going completely bust. It’s only really in the US that doctoring is a for-profit business but even there, if you look at the charges made by Burzynski for administering and monitoring the treatment, they’re sky high, and the hospital doesn’t get much of a cut (unlike surgery, say). The conspiracy idea does not hold up at any level.

David Howe

YOu seem to have a great deal at stake in defending pseudoscience. Why?

DeepCough

A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that cancer patients had “too high expectations” that chemotherapy would cure their cancer, but that’s because oncologists aren’t telling their patients the truth of about the nature of the treatment, because if more oncologists did that, more people would probably choose less or no chemotherapy, since it is a “scorched-earth” policy toward the entire body, which keeps you sicker and always coming back to the doctor, and that’s the way American medicine is run these days: keeping you sick for the sake of repeat business.

David Howe

or you could just die of cancer

Haystack

I’m all for informing cancer sufferers and letting them make an informed decision about what their choices are. What I can’t tolerate are those who enrich themselves by holding out false hope to the terminally ill.

David Howe

chemo and radiation are not false hope. this quackery is.

Calypso_1

if you were to read haystacks other comments on this post you would see that your comment is misdirected

ZM

Most people diagnosed with cancer are incapable of making decisions due to shock. The first reaction is denial and it can last for very long time. Some cancers are very aggressive and require prompt action. It’s very difficult in such a situation to process information and think rationally.

http://twitter.com/spookiewon Pjay (Patti) Pender

From experience I can tell you it is difficult, but not impossible, to think rationally. I was perfectly capable of making my own decisions, thank-you-very- much.

David Howe

therefore stop them from using chemo and cleanse their auras instead?

ZM

Well, that’s what I would do if I was told I had couple of months to live. Many doctors (they are not the US citizens) would advise the same, and they actually often do.

Calypso_1

Most patients hear what they want to hear regardless of what you tell them. Even worse are the families. Worse still is when the kids are ready for Mom or Dad to go
and they want you to be able to tell you how long till the end…and hint that you can do something to help it along. And the most intolerable is when families just can’t cope & insist on life-saving measures, surgeries or change their mind about palliative care when there is
simply nothing left to do. It’s like performing procedures on the undead. It’s a sickness in our culture and it has nothing to do with medicine. It’s an inability to deal with dying.

http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.diala.752 Jonathan Diala

Oncologists aren’t all psychopaths buddy. It’s f*cking hard to tell the mother of a 4 year old that has leukemia that the chemo probably isn’t gonna work.

http://www.facebook.com/modemac E.w. Modemac

http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/01/19/43165.htm : ‘In January 2012, Lola Quinlan, an elderly, stage IV cancer patient, sued
Dr Burzynski for using false and misleading tactics to swindle her out
of $100,000. She also sued his companies, The Burzynski Clinic, the
Burzynski Research Institute and Southern Family Pharmacy, in Harris
County Court. She sued for negligence, negligent misrepresentation,
fraud, deceptive trade and conspiracy.[“

http://twitter.com/MissNissKat NissKat

These are no more than allegations brought on by Quinlan, whom you failed to mention that she read and signed an Informed Consent Form for each medication she was given and was never given investigational drug. A physician having an affiliation with a pharmacy, is in no way a crime.You also fail to mention the outcome of her trial, perhaps because it went nowhere. Without a ruling, her lawsuit became nothing but false allegations.

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

Largely on the grounds that she was dead, yes. But tell me: in the informed consent forms, does it imply that the results of clinical trial of the unproven experimental treatment for which you’re paying tens of thousands will be published? Most people enrolling in a trial of an unproven treatment expect the trial to be published. People are rightly very angry that “big pharma” only publishes about half of trial results, which makes Burzynski’s 0% publishing rate a bit of an issue doesn’t it?

rtb61

A whole lot more psychopathic pharmaceutical corporate executives need to die along with their lobbyists and corrupt politicians and more cancer patients need to survive.

http://twitter.com/rjblaskiewicz Bob Blaskiewicz

But their mothers are dying of cancer. They are dying of cancer. It makes no sense for people supposedly so selfish to withhold their own cure!

The 2010 film, Burzynski, Cancer is Serious Business, directed, written, edited, and narrated by Eric Merola, an art director
of television commercials, describes Burzynski’s use of antineoplastons
and his legal clashes with government agencies and regulators.[47] The Village Voice
commented that the movie “violates every basic rule of ethical
filmmaking” and that by interviewing only Burzynski’s supporters, the
film’s producer “is either unusually credulous, or doesn’t understand
the difference between a documentary and an advertisement”.[48] Variety described the film as having the qualities of a “paranoid conspiracy theory” and likened it to the National Enquirer,
adding that the film’s explanatory diagrams are “simplistic to the
point of idiocy”. The review concluded that “despite its infotainment
look, Burzynski ultimately proves convincing.”[49] Prior to the debut of “Burzynski”, Houston Press
correspondent Cory Malisow mocked the film’s lack of objectivity,
calling it “a puff-piece paean that cherrypicks facts and ignores any
criticism”, and criticized it for presenting only Burzynski’s side of
the story.[50]

Ahem

Whether this guy is real or not, at least his ‘victims’ live to sue him apparently. Dead men from chemo can’t talk, but perhaps any skeptics that cancer is in fact business should visit one of many palliative treatment centers and ask the nearly dead how they like their chemo treatment. “Quacks” aside, trillions of dollars have been poured into cancer research coming up empty asking for more money through bull shit charities should be the ones on trial. It’s common sense that any alternative cure will be scrutinized, labeled as fraud so the big fraud can run its business as usual. Here we are discussing one guy, as opposed to a mafia that sheep continue to believe in despite much more dismal results making the biggest buck.

So, you mean to tell me that every single person he has treated didn’t go into permanent remission? Where has he claimed that? I thought incremental progress was good? That’s what you said earlier.

http://twitter.com/rjblaskiewicz Bob Blaskiewicz

I’m saying he gives three shoddy, incomplete and unconvincing examples in his documentary (as Gorski found them to be) and that when you look at a data set of people who only share the fact that they have begged for money in public to see him, that they are all, with a single exception, dead. Go fact check me.

David Howe

the reason that alternative cures are labeled as fraud is because they are fraud.

Buggie

There are a lot of people out there claiming to have miracle cures, most of it is utter nonsense. However, as a type 1 diabetic, I can assure you the basic claim in this video is correct. Drug companies are making a fortune out of uncurable diseases, and it’s not in their best interests to cure them.
For example, I can change my blood sugar reader quite easily for free. I just have to write to the company and they’ll send me one free of charge. Why? Because they make quite a bit of money on the reactive strips I have to buy every month (they’re single use, as you put a drop of blood on them, and you use about half a dozen a day). In fact, if they didn’t make money out of the reactive strips, I’m quite sure their R&D departments would have come up with bloodless readers by now (there are several possibilities, but no major funding for proper R&D).
Plus they have customers who are going to be needing their products for life. All their research goes into bringing out better treatments, I have never seen a single announcement or paper coming from these companies about finding a cure (or at least promising new avenues of research). Their main concern is patenting new molecules before the competition, and improving them regularly to keep customers from switching to the competition.

Although in all fairness, they’ve done wonders with the insuline molecues. Life as a diabetic has changed so much over the past 50 years, or even just the past 20. But still, we have to either do at least 4 injections a day, or put up with wearing an insuline pump 24/7, which makes us very profitable customers…

David Howe

you are putting the cart before the horse. you started with a lifelong disease; they didn’t give you one.

Buggie

Uhhh, just as in this article the patients started out with cancer, they drug companies didn’t give them cancer (or at least that’s not relevant here…). It’s about companies unwilling to find a cure, even fight against it, so they can keep selling their treatment.

David Howe

you really need evidence that they are concealing a cure. there is no such evidence and it’s foolish and paranoid to make that assumption.

A S K

Not just foolish and paranoid, but really, really insulting to the legion of scientists out there working to cure cancer. Having worked at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, I can tell you for a fact that your assertion is utter bullshit.

Brian DeSmet

there’s a difference between trying to find a “cure” and trying to find the root causes. ever wonder why Americans have higher rates of cancer than the rest of the world? it’s because we have such a toxic environment, from our food to all the chemicals in our homes. look at the environmental causes if you want to reduce cancer rates. anything else only treats the symptoms and not the causes.

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk Guy Chapman

The likelihood of contracting cancer increases with age. As general health increases, we live longer, and become more likely to die of cancer. The reason they didn’t get so much cancer in Ancient Greece is that the average lifespan was about 28 years – but they did get cancer, in fact they coined the term.

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

I like to bring the controversy! I think debate is good but please watch it. Then make points. Don’t just look for ideological allies in the comments section and jump on the pile.

He’s not just quack mixing herbs and voodoo dancing or something. The debate is not “New Age” vs “Science” He is a scientists and a Doctor with a clinically tested FDA approved cancer drugs.

Artor

The debate is “Fraud,” vs. “Reliable medical professionals.”

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

I know, because you are an ideologue and identify as a “skeptic” and have to divide the issue that way. your mind only works in binary apparently. Your mind is made up, people you agreed with ahead of time, introduced you to this guy framed the issue for you and you followed them carte blanche.

I actually am open minded on the issue. Clinical trials are expensive. Its hard being an outsider going against an established cartel. Children with glioma have a really grim prognosis, some of them have been cured by this guy. When you hold up ones he didn’t cure, you must also point out that most die from this kind of cancer and that many die after undergoing rounds of chemo and radiation and have horrible side effects from that whereas antineoplaston treatment is non toxic.

http://twitter.com/rjblaskiewicz Bob Blaskiewicz

You’d be surprised. There might be evidence that Burzynski’s stuff works, but he has never completed the basic homework that would justify the claim that ANP works. And ANP is of course toxic. It’s chemotherapy by any definition! Add to that the fact that he ALSO GIVES CHEMO THERAPY, and you have a complete, useless anecdotal freaking mess when it comes to trying to determine whether or not ANP works.

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

I thought you said treatments need to build on the work of others? So he his combining genetically targeted chemo and radiation with antineoplastins and some how that is wrong too? So which is it? He is a quack for being a “lone genius” or he’s a quack for combing his treatment with other therapies?

David Howe

you are the one with the problem. you are using a common tactic. you really need to educate yourself. you look like a fool.

Artor

If anyone needs to know more about Burzynski, follow this link. Orac has been chronicling his malfeasance for years now, and this latest post is full of links to corroborating information. The writer of this Disinfo post, plus commenters Ahem & Ted Heistman need to read up, as they’re proving themselves to be credulous idiots.

Wow, how weird that these are all links to “skeptic” websites. All these links follow your weird fetish. Who could have predicted that?

David Howe

a skeptic is person who is science- and reason-based. that’s where the correct information is found

http://twitter.com/TedHeistman Ted Heistman

This guy Burzynski is well known, and has been around. There are a lot of people that identify themselves as “skeptics” and they spend a lot of time debating on the internet. Its a weird sub culture to me. Because its almost like they have talking points. They support each other, use each others arguments, quote rules of logic etc. They all sound alike after a while. Often they cut and paste things people they admire have said. Its like a cult. They really do seem like a bunch of evangelicals to me. They worship Science. and its kind of weird. Because being scientific and worshiping science is not the same thing.

So the fact that he has been on this cult’s radar doesn’t really mean anything to me. But people in cults like to divide everyone into a binary system of good and evil. So in this rough categorization they have put Burzinski on the “quack” side of the ledger. But really he’s a scientist. so it doesn’t fit. I am sure none of these internet skeptics are able to look at this objectively.

David Howe

we have talking points because they are based on facts and verifiable research. your own approach is quite the opposite of skepticism and seems to be distorting your perceptions. I would call your approach superstitious and paranoid with no evidence to back it up. That’s just wrong.

real name

whatever ted, you are full of shit. just stop talking

Guest

I just got done watching, and even if this is done as a promotional documentary from a “ad man” it does speak true to the problems with the Pharma and big government. My opinion is its your medical choice, and choose your own treatment or which doctors you get advice from. Its all your responsibility not the governments. The FDA trying to shutdown something that is legal under state law by pressuring state bureaucratic to take harassing and unlawful approaches then there is something very wrong.